


Hah! Jeered the sun

by Souja



Category: BIRDMEN - 田辺イエロウ | Tanabe Yellow
Genre: Character-centric, Friendship, Gen, I had an idea and I went with it, Marco Polo referenced at least twice, Thought Barf, Writing practice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 16:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10745799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Souja/pseuds/Souja
Summary: The kids play a game. It's basically Hide and seek but with birds





	Hah! Jeered the sun

**.Hah! Jeered the Sun.**

**\--**

_True Bros don't flake just because they feel like shit_

**\--**

 

 

Something dropped a thousand weights onto Rei's chest at six am.

 

He'd breathed, deep, trying to calm the thumping of his heart, to find the cause and stop the effect and roll over and _sleep._ But the same thing that had rendered him immobile had stolen all his energy stores and replaced them with lead or tile or something equally lacking. He settled instead for gazing at the wide expanse of his ceiling, barely lit in the new sunlight.

 

 _Wake up,_ said the sun, _it’s time to get a move on._

 

And he’d normally comply. Get up, wash his face, brush his teeth and hair, get _on_ with his day. That was his routine. But his body desired to stay put the same way his head desired to dive into his sheets and never speak to another human being ever. He compromised between the two and remained still as a corpse. A corpse with added breathing capabilities. A zombie? Maybe. (A classy zombie).

 

A prickling feeling intruded on his chest with every breath taken under the heavy fabric of the duvet. His body felt leaden, as if every limb had been meticulously replaced by tungsten (the weight-fiend had been busy, then. made sure to cover _every_ base). This shocked him at first. And then, slowly, he recalled the familiar breathless sensation, the bed-ridding heaviness. More common before the nights of flying, the strategic punches of the monsters under his skin.

 

Oh, Rei thought dryly, staring up at dimly lit ceiling in the listless echoes of days not-so-long gone. They danced testily at the back of his mind, entrapping him to the bed. It was one of  _those_ days. 

 

Well that wouldn’t do. He had plans.

 

(but he could just stay there, he reasoned. he could remain in bed and his friends would go out and have fun and he would be _alone_ and he’d make it up to them next meeting, promise. as if part of the reason for his presidency wasn’t based on the hope that it’d force him out at least twice a week and it had! it had! he just...he needed...)

 

Apparently his mind was not of the same mind (did that make sense?). He lay there, quietly, a twilight between sleep and meager existing, counting dust until the voices of his friends pierced the silence.

 

Karasuma’s tweets reached him first but experience told him Tsubame had likely been awake longer, prepping her brother for the days activities in her mother’s stead as she did every Sunday. He tweeted a lazy good morning (' _mood gorning,' was what he'd actually sent. rei would have laughed if he was sure it wouldn't warp into something else)_. Tsubame tweeted back cheerfully, confirming his suspicions. Kamoda grumbled a greeting before begging for more time to sleep.

 

 _You've slept enough!_ Karasuma snapped, ignoring the yawn of sleep in his own voice. 

 

_But Ei-chan!_

 

_No buts! Wake! Up!_

 

The conversation bustled on without him, and Rei, meanwhile, struggled so that every bit of shitty feeling was contained to his small corner of thought-space. When Karasuma addressed him specifically with a crude mixture of annoyance and concern, the lethargy of his thoughts wasn’t entirely fake.

 

 _Some of us need our beauty sleep, Karasuma,_ he bit back. Buried under sheets and pillows, Rei hoped it came across joking.

 

 _Like that’s an excuse!_ The comment was well-timed, cut off Kamoda’s agreement and solidified his fate. Rei pressed his eyelids shut, willing the bad feelings away as Karasuma continued to the next order of business, then begging the sunlight to stop as he gave instructions of when where how to meet.

 

The sun laughed oafishly in the sky.

 

\--

 

He’d caught her staring twice thus far. Once before boarding when he’d fiddled to pull his hat from his bag, and subsequently through the train ride over. So it was good, probably, when the train rolled to a stop and she didn’t wait for him before getting off. It was very Tsubame of her. And he, not wishing to damper her spirits anymore than they’d been of late, did his best to refortify his defenses.

 

Tsubame grinned up at him as they left the busy train platform. Her dress swished with every step and she cackled excitedly, her words stringing one after another with exaggerated gusto. Rei, for his part, adjusted the brim of his hat and stepped around the silver railing leading down the wheelchair access to join her. He tried for excited and hid all else behind his darkest pair of ray-bans.

 

Meanwhile, tweets flew from Karasuma, whose frantic helicoptering tight-roped between being a comfort and nuisance. Their destinations differed significantly, and his warnings cycled so frequently they reverberated tiredly even in absence. A lingering pity was reserved for Kamoda, who’d be bearing the brunt of Karasuma’s nervousness-induced precautionary tweets _and_ texts _and_ words.

 

(though, the prospect seemed less punishing than some alternatives.)

 

 _We’ll be good, Karasuma,_ Rei responded with every bit of cheek he could muster and then some because Tsubame, sunshine smiles and all, was an _influence._

 

_**You’d better.** _

 

He gasped at the needling surge of the death tweet and gripped at the skin where the bird tattoo splintered to an end, his last thought dying on his lips. They shared a sideways glance as he twitched against the sensation. She smiled through a wince of her own before erupting into giggles, nervous as it faded to a dull throb and probably embedded itself deep in their subconscious. “Guess we overdid it, huh?”

 

Rei nodded, sent the tweet equivalent of a peace sign to appease their bellwether.

 

(Somewhere, on the opposite side of town, Karasuma Eishi clicked his tongue and reevaluated his friendships. Kamoda Mikisada smiled and offered him a snack.)

 

The tweets ebbed once they reached the edge of the platform and the timer on his phone beeped 12:00 pm. Rei regarded Tsubame, whose smile outshone the sun, and tried to glean from her chatter as much as he could. He’d practice, of course, and understood it mostly.

 

“I’m excited,” was what it boiled down to, “Very excited.” Any other day she’d have his full agreement.

 

Tsubame danced down the last flight of steps, taking them two at a time while he made for the railing nearest the benches and set his timer to one hour--then, he’d come find her. By the time he looked up, she was by a line of metal cylinders, waving wildly.

 

Smiling, Rei waved back and settled to doddling the hour away.

 

\--

 

The sun in all its blazing glory picked the one day he’d forgone reasonable dressing to attempt to turn him into a crisp, middle-schooler roast. Made worse was the deceit from the earlier-- on the train, while tweeting finalities back and forth, he’d the _gall_ to think it was a nice day.

 

 _Hah!_ jeered the sun, with light blinding and rays unrelenting _._

 

Rei regarded it with a click of the tongue, a page shamelessly appropriated from the book of Karasuma.

 

Speaking of whom -- he jammed out a message on his phone, a quick, “ _Any luck w Kamoda?”_   He had minutes, probably, while the vice-pres picked the best words for his response, so Rei opted to try indulging in the summer day.

 

Despite the bustling cars, the speed walking pedestrians, the _obscene_ heat, the precinct hummed with a quietness that wasn't quite unpleasant. Not what he’d expect by a long shot, true, but he could pry answers once he’d found Tsubame-- and received personal bonus points if he managed it before Karasuma located Kamoda to add to his other bonus of coming out of bed at all.

 

He breathed in, once, twice and opened his eyes just as a bird took a shit on his would-be position.

 

 _Well_ , he thought, control of his face lost as he stared to the sky with its strolling clouds. Disbelief kept his sight trained upwards as he tiptoed around it, but eventually his gaze dropped to the offending substance (his head was _right there!)_ and he hurried his pace. Superstitious though he wasn't, he'd rather not risk being in the line of fire of celestial bodies with a penchant for irony.

 

Grey sidewalk stretched on, identical to the one he kept on his mind, and Rei fought valiantly against the urge to glance back at the drop zone (his _head!_ ). His efforts were mostly rewarded--he only broke once, and the old man he’d run into was quite gracious about the whole ordeal.

 

Rei slipped man, wife, and granddaughter alike an apologetic compliment before making his merry way. It wasn’t untrue, he told himself, recalling the dusts of laughter lines on the elderly couples’ faces and the giddy smile of the girl. He really wish them the best of their day out.

 

He continued, glancing around for structures familiar in the foreign area, ignoring the heat on his back as he tried to recall Tsubame’s tweet.

 

In Tsubame’s mind's-eye, the buildings were stretched tall and thin, some molding into the forms of others, looping into an endless sea of windows and doors and rooftops. Annoyingly hard to distinguish without the appropriate signage, but infinitely better than the gelatinous forms they were the first time around. Landmarks appeared as jarring splashes of colour, but all else dripped in silent, formless, order.

 

People were similarly faceless, groups often reconfigured into chimera of heads and limbs and echoes of _AHAHAHA_ laughs. To her right the sun, a maiden shy, glittered through the branches of trees.

 

To _his_ right, however, the brazen sun glared astoundingly bright, a feature he’d begun to think of as the solar equivalent of flipping the bird. Rei returned it a salute of his own then left before vengeance fell in the form of a meteorite or other such unpleasant things.

 

Karasuma’s reply came at the end of the path while he waited for the crosswalk to clear. “ _No luck”_ it said, and the emoji-de-jour had its teeth clenched and eyebrows narrowed and was, quite frankly, the most hideous thing he’d ever seen. Rei bit back a guffaw somewhere between a cough and a laugh. A little old lady glared to his left, and he smiled politely while posturing out of her way.

 

His first reaction was _“what the actual hell”_ , but he opted for a thumbs up and a more appropriate _“Lol >.< Good luck!!” _Giggles died off slowly as he continued in search of Tsubame and his greater quest to avoid collisions with pedestrians. For a small precinct, he noted dryly, it was easy to get lost in.

 

She texted him not a minute later. “ _Give up?”_ it said, a cheeky thing with blue hair grinning up at him. He could almost hear the bell of her laughter, but it could easily have been his ringtone. The second text held question marks galore and cheshire smiles.

 

He replied with a scoff, _“Nah,”_ and then, thinking further, added, “ _Wouldn’t dream of it”_ and a flurry of stars he knew Karasuma hated.

 

“ _Need a hint?”_ she responded along with a star of her own.

 

Rei considered it a moment, the idea mulling in his head as he looked about him. People continued to bustle. Vehicles rumbled past. He had, what, three hints till the game was called off? Till Tsubame needed return home at least, till he needed be accounted for by Nohara’s daily check-in.

 

“ _Just one.”_ he decided, stepping aside so that he hugged the side of the building. His first pairing with Karasuma had formed the habit when he'd ran into a building mid-tweet. A subsequent pairing with Kamoda and _so many kittens goodness gracious he still had dreams of fluff and sandpaper tongues_ had solidified it.

 

Tsubame’s tweets didn’t often obscure his vision, nor were they so particularly emotional that they stirred a physical reaction from him, but still. It was a hazard, one he could do without falling prey to, thank you very much. He could stand to be wrong or he could lean on a building to do it, his prerogative really.

 

The image flooded his vision in vivid blue, a stark contrast to the pastels and duller colours of her usual tweets. Smells assaulted his vision, wisps of food that curled on his senses, on his tongue. Somewhere between the phantom chills erupting in his mouth and his stomach gurgling in envy, it occurred to him that Tsubame was eating icecream.

 

When he opened his eyes the scene was gone and a small boy peered up at him, finger hooked on the fat of his lip.

 

He blinked.

 

The boy blinked.

 

He hazarded a wave.

 

The boy gifted him a grin of gap-teeth before stealing away to his mother's side. The middle-aged woman shot him a glare (as if _he’d_ made the kid stop) before pulling her son forward.

 

Rei shivered off the remnants of the vision. The taste of chocolate lingered on his lips as he surged forward.

 

\--

 

His clothes were sticky on his body, cloying to him uncomfortably under the weight of his dark cardigan. The space where his hair met the brim of his hat itched furiously. An army of invisible ants set to work on his skin. Rei breathed -- in through the nose. Hold for three. Out through the mouth-- before trying to conjure the will to step into the tenth building in an hour. It dinged lightly as he did.

 

Picture-laden walls matched those of the tweet--a vibrant cyan just shy of straining his eyes. He smiled politely at the hostess that greeted him before collapsing in the booth nearest the front. Relief washed over him to be out of the blistering sunlight and he sent his adversary one last rude gesture before the hostess came to his table.

 

He ordered the coldest thing on the menu, an atrocity of sugar and carbs, and waited patiently for it to come out. Beside him, an elderly man slurped his way through udon. Across, schoolgirls took pictures with their phones and giggled about the faces they made. It was the right place, down to the music and the wallpaper, but Tsubame was conspicuously absent.

 

His phone buzzed in time with his stifled groan. A tongue-emoji from Tsubame and a thumbs up from Karasuma.

 

He tended to Karasuma’s text first: “ _Found him?”_ he sent, scrutinizing the attached picture. Greenery littered the background where a cluster of kittens pawed at a makeshift toy. In the centre was Karasuma, his knees up to his chest and his face...soft. His jaw was lax, his eyes trained on the beans of the felines, his eyebrows furrowed slightly in concentration.

 

A tickle grazed the back of his throat and Rei coughed. Kamoda must’ve been the one to take the picture, he reasoned. It was saved to the growing stash of candids amassed over the year that he’d yet to organize. (karasuma’s were predictably few, and those in focus? a rarity.)

 

To Tsubame went a determined face that he felt exactly none of as he reclined into the cool leather of the establishment. She and her personal nuclear reactor of energy would be finding a new place to hide by now. Apparently she knew the area better than she’d let on originally, which he’d expected from her gleeful grin at the train station and the way she bounced from foot to foot while waiting for their desired vehicle.

 

He had no chance, did he?

 

Thoughts of giving up were tantalizing, yet somehow wedged unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach. He waded against it and the part of his mind that mused that his failure would be expected, accepted, and brushed under the carpet with the rest, shuttled them away behind years of defense mechanisms.

 

A remnant of a Rei more human, he supposed, and then proceeded to ignore _that_ can of worms altogether as the blasphemy against his arteries was set before him. He’d go searching for her as soon as he was done.

 

\--

 

He was a damned man when he finished the atrocity. His stomach said it, his head _screamed_ it, the hostess acknowledged it from the corner of her eyes.

 

Rei sighed and blinked against the numbing pain of a brain-freeze in progress. A punishment, perhaps, for going contrary to that which was natural. If he was _really_ quiet he could feel the murmur of sugar working through his veins and the wing mass resigning.  _I save you from certain doom_ , it said, _and this is the thanks I get? I’m out!_

 

Neglected, his phone chorused from the table.

 

From Karasuma-- a slew of concerned faces and a capitalised demand for a status report. A terrible gasp overcame him as Karasuma’s command came through.

 

 _ **Sagisawa, respond.**_ A curt tone underlined with a Karasuma-brand of worry-kindness-ire. Rei fumbled for his phone to respond, propelled in part by instincts and a conditioned aversion to the needles that would plague him till he did.

 

“ _It’s all over for me now_ ,” was what he typed before reading it and rationalizing that wingmass _probably_ didn’t fix heart attacks. He added, “ _my brain’s been frozen as penance to the sun-god.”_

 

An inaudible sigh from far away, and Karasuma sent a glaring emoji and he supposed that all was forgiven. Stellar.

 

From Tsubame-- a set to look like it was giving him a pat of sympathy followed by a grinning monkey that didn’t seem sympathetic at all. He clicked his tongue but spared not a response.

 

It occurred to him, through painful thrums and the warm liquid the hostess had given him (he liked her, he decided, liked most that she didn’t respond to his pain with a smilie face), that he was probably projecting the hell that was his brainfreeze to the rest of his friends. It occurred to him with no small measure of glee (probably sugar induced) that he felt no remorse on the matter whatsoever.

 

The gaudy clock that had greeted him winked and said he had little over an hour before Tsubame declared victory. Okay, he thought, pushing aside the plate and cup and cradling his head gently, he’d set out once he could feel his brain again without the frozen haze.

 

As soon as he exited the building, he was met with a wave of humidity and heat that made him freeze in his tracks, the only defense against crawling back into the building and taking a seat. The sun, the brazen fool, still hung lazily in the sky. Rei clicked his tongue and continued to walk despite his everything begging him to stay.

 

\--

 

No one could blame him for being desperate after thirty minutes of walking and the abuse of two hints. The same could be said of when Tsubame sent snapshots of him from the inside of stores he’d passed and, when he rushed in, found that she had _left_ already.

 

“You just missed her,” said the manager, said the hostess, said the old man sitting by the front of the establishment, “Better luck next time.”

 

And the _sun_. The sun shone brightly, _awfully_. Hung high in the daylight sky, it reminded him that time was passing and he was _losing_. He hadn’t _screamed,_  technically, but Karasuma’s text had been laced with punctuation marks and Kamoda had taken to broadcasting pictures of cats in intervals since then (which helped, actually. tabby’s and tom’s skulking about his mind made disappointment that much easier a pill to swallow).

 

So what he meant to say, is that his actions were every bit warranted given the situation.

 

The bench beneath him was worse for wear, paint chipped and wood splintering maliciously, but it was out of the sun and thus a godsend in his books. He was Marco Polo searching for the ends of the Earth, and the horizon played tricks and skirted out of reach.

 

(it was Magellan he was referencing, he'd later realise, but the two at the time seemed interchangeable. like potato and po- _ta-_ to, or the sun and “vengeful sky ball”.)

 

It struck him then. Not the rain, though he’d be caught in that as well but infinitely less miserable, but an idea.

 

Crafty.

 

Cheating?

 

Not unless Karasuma said so.

 

Rei took a breath, standing under the canopy of city-planted trees, away from his celestial nemesis. He focused all his energy to one thought, his last chance.

 

“ _Marco”_ he tweeted loudly.

 

“ _Polo!”_ came two responses, and there’s no shame in admitting he almost _whooped_ in relief.

 

A minute passed and his phone buzzed with life.

 

_No!!_

 

_Cheating >:O_

 

 _Not fair!_ \--Flaming head emoji.

 

Rei _squealed_ , turning heel to the direction where the tweet closest to him had emanated from. It was _near,_ too. Not even a kilometer from where he was sitting.

 

Tsubame was running when he caught sight of her. He heard his phone ping twice more.

 

“Cheat!” she called back to him.

 

“Not--,” his stomach ached with the beginnings of a stitch, “not unless Karasuma says so!”

 

A jovial cackle, somehow not even remotely out of breath, “Karasuma doesn't even know _how_ to play Marco Polo.”

 

His last thought, before Tsubame disappeared and he collided with a tree branch he'd not noticed, was of whether or not that was true.

 

\--

 

Exhausted both in brain and body, Rei settled in his bed. His latest fashion piece was a thing of ice he’d filched from Nohara’s kitchen under the guise of _unbeaarable_ summer heat. Sympathetic to a fault, the old woman had offered him grapes and fruits to recharge. In a tired fit he’d declined, more tantalized by the prospects of not moving for another eight-ten hours. Eventually he’d let his guilt wane him into eating, but for now?

 

For now he rested, grateful that the majority of the weight he felt was from his blanket.

 

“Young Master?” droned the intercom, “A friend for you.”

 

He groaned, rolled over, and gathered the fragments of energy scattered through his body.

 

 _Karasuma?_ Came the tired thought. His head raised an inch off the soft material of his pillow. If it wasn’t them, he decided, he’d no qualms in playing sick and ignoring it.

 

 _Nah,_ Tsubame replied, _Just me._

 

His head made contact with the pillow as he pressed his eyes shut. _Be there soon_ , he promised, making no moves to go.

 

A compromise was reached, eventually, between his desire to stay in place and his desire to meet his friend. Nohara housed her in the bowels of the kitchen, though he’d rarely venture there anyway. His meals were served in his room.

 

Rei paused before the door to the kitchen, adjusting his eyes against the glare of the sun. A final blow before it retired to the night.

 

 _Goodnight_ , it said, _rest well_.

 

He regarded it a moment, the splash of tangerine and blue as it began to vanish into night sky. And then he entered the silver panel doors.

 

Despite the chairs purposed for sitting and the occasional “floor is lava” game, Tsubame was rocking on the balls of her feet when he saw her. Fresh watermelon balanced easily in her hands, a compliment to the slices in the bowl on the countertop. Her attention was on a framed poster nearest the Great Knife Wall, a little demotivational sort with a cat on a tree.  _Hang in there, Baby!_ It said.

 

He coughed when he was in proximity, and in turn she gasped. The little watermelon in her hand flew three inches that day, to be caught and posited on the table. She waved before stalking over to him, maneuvering around island cutoffs and the materials they held. Her wrist still donned the hospital visitors band.

 

Blue eyes peered carefully at his nose, scrutinizing quickly before nodding in approval. “It’s all better!” she said. Her grin was toothy and Rei allowed himself to relax a smidge, resting his weight between the counter and the barstools that lined it.

 

Tsubame took the seat beside him, pushed the watermelon so it sat between the two of them with a gesture that bid him, “ _E_ _at._ ”

 

They were silent a while as the slices dwindled from ten to five to one.

 

And when they were done, she smiled at him.

 

“Better?” she asked, fiddling the shell between sticky fingers.

 

Rei blinked a moment, considering.

 

“Yeah,” he replied, stealing the last watermelon, “Better.”

 

\--

 

It came to him in the middle of the night, while the moon hung heavy and all good birdkids were to be asleep. A quiet huff, so silent he thought it was one of his own.

 

_I do SO know how to play Marco-Polo._

 

A little grumble, grumpy pout. A hushed thought, so as to not wake the two members they knew to be sleeping--or the third member that remained painfully absent. 

 

Rei laughed, swiping at his tablet as he waited for sleep to beckon him.

 

_Of course, Karasuma._

 

_._

**Author's Note:**

> : D


End file.
